Confections and other food products are frequently more appealing when they are formed from a plurality of interrelated strands. Extruders are used for making confections having a plurality of strands. These extruders form products having interrelated twisted strands and variations of interrelated twisted strands. However, these extruders are unable to form braided products, which are more appealing to many consumers. Further, hand-made braided products are expensive and time consuming to manufacture.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,334,845 to Tamminen discloses an apparatus and a method for producing bakery rolls. Two separate bars of dough enter and are ejected from separate oppositely rotating angled nozzles to form side-by-side interlocked spiraled strands. The side-by-side interlocked spiraled strands form what is described as a continuous roll bearing a great resemblance to a braided roll of dough. However, it is apparent that such a roll is not braided.
Other extruders are known for forming food products which have twisted strands taking the form of a traditional twisted configuration or a variety thereof. U.S. Pat. No. 2,856,868 to Kennedy describes a method and apparatus for kneading and twisting bread dough, including rotating two nozzles operatively connected to a common header to form the twist. U.S. Pat. No. 3,876,743 to Soderlund discloses a method and apparatus for producing a product having a helical twisted configuration without rotating the nozzles. Additionally, U.S. Pat. No. 4,504,511 to Binley discloses a method and apparatus for producing products with spirally-formed extrusible materials, including the step of rotating a nozzle body with adjacent nozzles about a central axis to form a coil shape.